Marvin Bartley Returns to Livingston Amid Unbeaten Streak
Marvin Bartley walks back into Livingston on Friday night without a word exchanged with the man who used to be his boss.
No phone call. No coffee. No clearing of the air.
Since the day he resigned at the end of last season, the Stenhousemuir manager has not spoken to Livingston sporting director David Martindale. Their first meeting since that abrupt split comes under the floodlights, live on BBC Scotland, with Championship points at stake and a few old wounds lurking in the background.
Back in May, Bartley and assistant Neil Hastings said they "had no option but to resign" after being told they would need to reapply for their own jobs. Bartley had stepped up from the backroom team in January, taking the reins once Martindale moved upstairs into a new role. Four months later, it was over.
No, I've not seen or spoken to Davie since leaving the football club,” Bartley says. “He's busy, I'm busy so I've not spoken to Davie since leaving the football club.
The silence is striking, but Bartley has not exactly vanished from Livingston’s orbit. Since he walked away, the 40-year-old has kept in touch with chairman Calvin Ford, who sent him what Bartley describes as a “lovely message” after Stenhousemuir knocked Livi out of the League Cup on penalties at Ochilview.
That shootout win hinted at something stirring in Larbert. The numbers since then confirm it. Stenhousemuir are unbeaten in nine games in all competitions, a part-time squad punching well above their financial weight and, for now, looking down on the rest of the Championship.
The manner of his exit from Livingston cut deep at the time.
At the time, I was definitely hurt in the days that followed,” he admits. “When the situation happened, I was really, really shocked.
But the more people I spoke to about it – and the more people that found out about it who weren't shocked – probably made me realise that I was maybe a little bit naive and green.
That's probably just me as a person. I take everything at face value.
Right now, I have got no kind of feeling to it. It's just another chapter in my book and I'm just continuing to try to do the best I possibly can for Stenhousemuir.
That “chapter” has turned into one of the early stories of the Scottish season. Appointed after Gary Naysmith, the man who delivered promotion from League 1, left for Ayr United, Bartley inherited a club that most outsiders expected to be dragged straight back down.
Instead, Stenny have ripped up the script.
Three wins and a draw from their opening four league matches have them perched at the top end of the Championship. Last weekend’s 3-1 victory over Inverness Caledonian Thistle underlined their momentum, a result that looked more like an established second-tier side flexing their authority than a newly-promoted, part-time outfit feeling their way in.
Cup form tells the same tale. Bartley has guided them through a successful League Cup group campaign, that penalty triumph over Livingston a key moment, before they toppled Premiership side Motherwell to book a quarter-final at home to Hearts next Friday. Ochilview will be packed and noisy for that one.
Before Hearts, though, comes Livingston. And Glenn Whelan’s side, with two wins and two defeats so far in the league, are still trying to work out exactly who they are in this new era.
The Championship has seen this movie before. Arbroath, another part-time club, turned the division upside down five years ago, Dick Campbell’s Red Lichties driving Kilmarnock to the wire in a title race that defied logic and budget sheets. That campaign shifted perceptions of what is possible for part-time teams in this league.
So the question hangs over Stenhousemuir now. Dare they dream of something even more improbable? Back-to-back promotions and a leap into the top flight that would reframe the club’s entire history?
Bartley refuses to take the bait.
Every club in the pyramid now dreams of one day being in the top flight,” he says. “There's still so long to go and it's a boring answer for you all, but when I came into the job we spoke about what we hope to achieve and that's not changed.
We've got that target and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out what that target is because everyone had us as favourites to go down in this league and we understand we are only four games into it.
We can't get carried away with thinking about promotion or play-offs or anything like that because this league is unforgiving.
We're thinking about achieving our goals and if we do that, that's a minor miracle in itself when you look at the financial constraints we have compared to every other club in this league.
The subplot on Friday is obvious: Bartley back at the club where he thought he had a future, facing the man he hasn’t spoken to since walking away. The main story, though, might be bigger.
If Stenhousemuir walk out of Livingston with their unbeaten run intact and their early-season surge still rolling, this stops being a cute start for the underdogs.
It starts to look like a serious campaign.
